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Decline The Demise of the American RPG: Why So Few Top US RPGs?

Cabazone

Educated
Joined
Dec 12, 2007
Messages
66
Location
France
Frankly, in PC-centric genres, the prevalence of console in the gaming habits of the country is probably today one of the main factors of why said country doesn't produce that many games in these genres, as it has already been said.

However, I also fancy another hypothesis : the opportunity cost of these games is far greater in a country like the United States which is one of the main players in the high-budget part of the industry than it is in most of European countries (with France being, perhaps, the only exception).
Think about it : you are an aspiring game developer. In the United States, you can join a lot of big studios, create games which people will actually hear about and make quite a few bucks (less than in other industries for sure, but nothing to spit on). In Sweden, Russia or Germany, you don't have as many opportunities, so you'll be more likely to end up making low or mid-budget games for a niche market (and, thus, increase your probability of producing a game worthy of Codex respect).
Same thing if you are an investor: in America, you have many teams (or potential teams) that you know are capable of producing a game for the mass market. In most European countries, they are far fewer, and the most visible are already well funded, so it becomes more reasonable to put money into a mid-budget game for a less saturated market, which can still prove very profitable.
 
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Lurker47

Savant
Joined
Jul 30, 2017
Messages
721
Location
Texas
The fact that Lisa is on that list and is representing the U.S of A (and also not doing like, 3 seconds of research to confirm that the creator of it is American and just leaving a "?" instead) for good RPG's is just painful :decline:
 

Nael

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
11,384
Location
Indy
GOG.com/Steam opened up a floodgate to distribute to the American market that didn't exist before. American market is still by far the largest. Even if you combine Europe. So naturally every game developer in the world, large and small is going to take advantage of that.

It's simple as that.

You can close out the thread now.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,938
I blame the SJW movement, specifically the SJW writers for game. The SJW in other departments are bad enough but writings can be insufferable.

That's right.

Writing in RPG is something that is impossible to fix once it's released. Simply impossible.

And SJW writers alienate the right-wing gamers, even discounting the bad writings.

So good games become mediocre, mediocre become outright intolerable. Just because we dont like some shithead texts.

As for SJW-bias decision in non-writing aspect of the game, I refer specifically to Mass Effect Andromeda. The first thing coming into the game hit you between the eye is that you can NOT make a non-negroid character face. FUCK YOU! I dont want my char has negroid features. It is built in and you can not edit it out despite doing the customize. Even a pure asian design, or pure aryan, still show some of that.

It irked me to be force fed SJW propaganda. I refuse to play that piece of shit until we can mod some custom face in. Something that is not containing negroid features, just to spite those fuckers.
Sorry, I lose my book of anthropolgy from 1868 ""Bringing the values of the French Republic to primitive peoples". So, what is a "negroïd" face ?

Gonna be "something something wide, flat nose, something something" prolly.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Sorry, I lose my book of anthropolgy from 1868 ""Bringing the values of the French Republic to primitive peoples". So, what is a "negroïd" face ?

"The more typically Negroid has undulating supraorbital ridges, sharp upper orbital margins, a rounded glabella, a plain frontonasal junction, and a wide interorbital distance"

"Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine", Krogman and Iscan.

hope that helps, champ.
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
Don't see any decline in American dominance.

USA still has more games than any other country. Japan is probably the closest competition and it was so for ages. Japanese games are also much more popular in their home country and thus it's easier for them to get into non-conformist lists and Codex is obviously non-conformist in a weird way - the list lacks anything from an American developer Jeff Vogel and, naturally, ignores Bethesda because we're edgy enough.

Also this list of strategy games includes a lot of crap while most American strategy games are all of decent quality.

Another thing - many of those companies are based elsewhere while the designer is still American one. Like Ultimate General series is produced by Ukrainian developers but the guy in charge is DarthMod guy who is certainly not Ukrainian and probably is American. Same for Gary Grigsby - mabey developer is in UK but the designer is Californian. For this you have obvious economic reasons.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
You forgot first-rank Canadian developer, Beamdog. According to Steam and GoG, they have developed some of the greatest RPGs of all-time: BG, BG2, IWD, PS:T and NWN.
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
USA still has more games than any other country.

That might be true, but if it is, it's certainly far from the overwhelming dominance that they once enjoyed. Half of those games are probably insignificant shovelware that nobody will care about or remember in 5 years' time.
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
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Messages
857
When was that dominance, 80's? In the 90's RPG market was dominated by JRPGs. By 2000's you had a lot of European developers.
 

*-*/\--/\~

Cipher
Joined
Jul 10, 2014
Messages
909
Because it is unreasonable to expect that one of like 50 countries capable of producing games should be making a disproportionate amount of them? 'Murica is much less speshul than you think.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
USA still has more games than any other country.

That might be true, but if it is, it's certainly far from the overwhelming dominance that they once enjoyed. Half of those games are probably insignificant shovelware that nobody will care about or remember in 5 years' time.
Nope, it's still an overwhelming dominance.
Count how many games on this page are either created by an American studio or an American studio's subsidiary: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/2017_best_sellers/
 

Humanophage

Arcane
Joined
Dec 20, 2005
Messages
5,032
Don't see any decline in American dominance.

USA still has more games than any other country. Japan is probably the closest competition and it was so for ages. Japanese games are also much more popular in their home country and thus it's easier for them to get into non-conformist lists and Codex is obviously non-conformist in a weird way - the list lacks anything from an American developer Jeff Vogel and, naturally, ignores Bethesda because we're edgy enough.

Also this list of strategy games includes a lot of crap while most American strategy games are all of decent quality.

Another thing - many of those companies are based elsewhere while the designer is still American one. Like Ultimate General series is produced by Ukrainian developers but the guy in charge is DarthMod guy who is certainly not Ukrainian and probably is American. Same for Gary Grigsby - mabey developer is in UK but the designer is Californian. For this you have obvious economic reasons.
It does have more games, but they are quite low on the ladder. Besides, it should have more games, what's with having a much bigger population than any other country on the list, even if you only count whites and Asians as being interested in making intelligent games.

I disagree about the quality of the strategies. What's so good about GalCiv III, Starcraft II, Banished, Civilization VI, and Offworld Trading Company? The Paradox games certainly beat them handily, and there are other clearly better entries like Eador or Rimworld, albeit the former is oldish.

I agree that some key developers may be American, and that fact is missing, though I tried to be detailed for RPGs. For example, key designer for Darkest Dungeons is US-born, but his studio is always described as Canadian. It does probably make sense to change it to American.

Jeff Vogel didn't make any especially good games in the period between 2012 and 2016. Geneforge 5 is from 2008, while Avernum 6 is from 2009. I presume he would have been on the list if either of those came after 2011. Avadon isn't very good and was a downgrade compared to older games, so it is understandable that Avadon 3 is only on the 97th position and Avadon 2 is even lower.

Nope, it's still an overwhelming dominance.
Count how many games on this page are either created by an American studio or an American studio's subsidiary: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/2017_best_sellers/
Well, you will observe that none of those prominent American games are good RPGs. They are chiefly action games.

Here are all the RPGs and MMORPGs from this link, unless I am missing something:
Platinum: Divinity: Original Sin - Belgium, The Witcher 3 - Poland;
Golden: Middle Earth: Shadow of War - US, Nier: Automata - Japan, Dark Souls - Japan, TESO - US, Fallout 4 - US;
Silver: Conan - Exiles - Norwegian, Path of Exile - New Zealand, Final Fantasy Online XIV - Japan;
Bronze: Darkest Dungeon - Canada, Skyrim - US, Grim Dawn - US.

That is precisely the point of the thread, that Americans make many games, but they don't make many good games any more - or good RPGs, at any rate (or strategies).

Iron Tower is international really.
I assumed VD was the key driving force behind AoD, judging by this thread, so I wanted to highlight that role. Regardless, few of them seem American. Mikitka is apparently Ukrainian, Velzi is Argentine, etc.

The fact that Lisa is on that list and is representing the U.S of A (and also not doing like, 3 seconds of research to confirm that the creator of it is American and just leaving a "?" instead) for good RPG's is just painful :decline:
Let me alleviate your pain. It is there because many non-RPGs were on the Codex list, but it is not up to me to remove them selectively based on my own judgement. I have never played the game nor heard of it until looking at the list with a bit more attention. The "?" is there because I didn't know the particular region of the US from which LISA developers come, and there is a region specified in parentheses for the rest. Thus, it simply means "unspecified region in the US". After all, it is immaterial to the subject of the thread, which is about top RPGs not being American. Upon further investigation, it seems the developer is from Colorado, which is quite unique for the top.
 
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Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
When was that dominance, 80's? In the 90's RPG market was dominated by JRPGs. By 2000's you had a lot of European developers.
First of all, Japanese RPGs had virtually no presence on non-Japanese computers in the 1990s. Second, only a few Japanese RPGs for the Famicom/NES had been released outside of Japan. The release of the SNES in 1991 (and the Sega Genesis in 1989) did herald a large increase in the number of Japanese RPGs available outside Japan, but these were still greatly outweighed in the overall videogame market by American CRPGs (SSI, Origin, Westwood, Looking Glass Studios, New World Computing, Interplay, Bethesda Softworks, Sir-Tech, etc.). It was only in the latter part of the decade that Japanese RPGs arguably overtook American CRPGs, due to the confluence of an even greater presence of Japanese RPGs on consoles in the era of the Sony Playstation (e.g. Final Fantasy VII in 1997 and many others thereafter) and the decline of American CRPGs (Bioware with Baldur's Gate in 1998).
 

Black

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May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,592
When was that dominance, 80's? In the 90's RPG market was dominated by JRPGs. By 2000's you had a lot of European developers.
Considering that jrpgs started off and still are poor-man's "wrpgs" you answer that yourself.
 

DoomIhlVaria

Cipher
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Make the Codex Great Again! Insert Title Here I'm very into cock and ball torture
As a programmer, I can speculate at least partially why. The salary for a programmer at a game studio is absolutely horrid. I'd be looking at less than half of my current salary at a medical devices company if I were to take a senior developer position at a game studio, along with worse benefits and likely a lot more stress. If you look at pretty much any other tech company list, USA will completely dominate the top companies.

OTOH, salaries for programmers outside of USA are typically far lower across the board so it might not be such a significant difference.

Yeah, I've always wanted to work on games but the realities of such a job are pretty horrifying. The work environment tends to be a lot worse, the pay half as much at best, and you're liable to be laid off after every project. You really have to want to make games to the exclusion of everything else to put up with that shit. Sadly, there's an endless stream of kids who don't know any better for the industry to chew up and spit out. As a result, conditions never improve and the games are total turds. So I'll stick to my boring business code, keep my family fed, and enjoy some imported Bohemian Peasant Simulator.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
As a programmer, I can speculate at least partially why. The salary for a programmer at a game studio is absolutely horrid. I'd be looking at less than half of my current salary at a medical devices company if I were to take a senior developer position at a game studio, along with worse benefits and likely a lot more stress. If you look at pretty much any other tech company list, USA will completely dominate the top companies.

OTOH, salaries for programmers outside of USA are typically far lower across the board so it might not be such a significant difference.

This + RPG companies are probably even worse. If a dev at EA makes half your salary, does an Obsidian dev make 1/3? 1/4? Along with the whole not getting a paycheck whenever the company isn't doing well. It's not a good environment for experienced professionals. It's only bearable for young people without a family to provide for. Naturally they probably aren't that great at creating the next top RPG and instead just poorly imitate trends. Wouldn't be surprised if that's why Bioware has had such quality issues lately.

That said, any top RPG list is generally going to be talking about RPGs that have a certain amount of uniqueness to them, which means foreign games can have a certain advantage. The Witcher would not be nearly as great if it didn't feel so Polish.
 

Ocelot

Learned
Joined
Feb 21, 2018
Messages
363
I think it's part of a bigger problem. US companies don't like taking risks and American AAA games may be technically good but they aren't very innovative, original or bold. Underrail, for example, may not be as expensive, refined or cutting edge compared to, say, Dragon Age Inquisition but it's superior if you aren't new to the medium and actually want to play something new and decent. Dark Souls has countless imperfections but it's bold as it refuses to dumb down certain areas and bosses for the sake of attracting the more impatient and casual players.

I blame the SJW movement, specifically the SJW writers for game. The SJW in other departments are bad enough but writings can be insufferable.

SJW, the boogeyman of the decade.
 

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
2,983
When was that dominance, 80's? In the 90's RPG market was dominated by JRPGs. By 2000's you had a lot of European developers.
First of all, Japanese RPGs had virtually no presence on non-Japanese computers in the 1990s. Second, only a few Japanese RPGs for the Famicom/NES had been released outside of Japan. The release of the SNES in 1991 (and the Sega Genesis in 1989) did herald a large increase in the number of Japanese RPGs available outside Japan, but these were still greatly outweighed in the overall videogame market by American CRPGs (SSI, Origin, Westwood, Looking Glass Studios, New World Computing, Interplay, Bethesda Softworks, Sir-Tech, etc.). It was only in the latter part of the decade that Japanese RPGs arguably overtook American CRPGs, due to the confluence of an even greater presence of Japanese RPGs on consoles in the era of the Sony Playstation (e.g. Final Fantasy VII in 1997 and many others thereafter) and the decline of American CRPGs (Bioware with Baldur's Gate in 1998).
So let me get this straight, Bioware caused the commercial decline of American cRPG's even though:
  • they're not American, but Canadian.
  • Baldur's Gate is probably the most commercially succesful cRPG ever made.
  • long before Baldur's Gate, the mid-90's cRPG drought had already made the genre practically vanish from the face of the earth and mostly reduced to hack-and-slash fests like Ultima 8 and Diablo.
  • they barely had any influence on the genre; the only other developer to make RTwP RPGs was Black Isle because due to being Bioware's publisher, they had access to the Infinity Engine.

:philosoraptor: Something doesn't quite add up here.
 
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